The schools are the best reason to pay Reigate prices. The primaries score comfortably in maths. The state secondaries post solid exam results. Nine in ten schools across the county are rated good or better. Parents here are not buying a house so much as a seat in a classroom, with a garden thrown in.
There are nine mainstream state primary schools in the area, and their pupils average a Key Stage 2 maths score of about 105. That is a strong showing, and it comes from a spread of schools rather than one star carrying the rest. Reigate Parish Church Primary School started life as a church school on West Street and has moved twice since, which makes it one of the few things in Reigate that has changed address more often than the average buyer. Reigate Priory Community Junior School takes children from seven to eleven, and Wray Common Primary School sits by the common it is named after, handy for families who want the school run and the dog walk to be the same trip.
At secondary, the two mainstream state schools in the area record a pupil-weighted Attainment 8 score of about 53. That is a solid result, and two schools is a small field, so one good year group can move the average more than parents might assume. Reigate School in Woodhatch takes children from 11 to 16 and opened in 1958 under an earlier name. Sixth form moves on to Reigate College, which has occupied a 1927 building once home to a girls' school. The Royal Alexandra and Albert School is the local oddity: a state boarding school on the Gatton Park estate, taking children from seven to eighteen, descended from two Victorian-era orphanages. Most towns do not have a state boarding option up the road, and most parents do not know to look for one.
Ofsted has graded 159 schools and settings across Surrey, and 147 of them are good or outstanding, so a little over nine in ten. Thirty are outstanding. Seven require improvement and five are inadequate, which is a short list but not an empty one. These counts cover the whole county council area, not Reigate alone, and a further set of settings have no published grade yet, which says nothing about their quality either way. The county is a strong place to be a pupil, and Reigate sits inside that picture rather than propping it up.
A school's name on a list is not a place in its classroom. Admission rules decide who gets in, and in a town where families move specifically for the schools, the popular ones fill fast. Buying a house near a school buys a closer shot, not a guarantee, and the only reliable test is the school's own admissions criteria read before the offer goes in, not after the allocation letter arrives. Estate agents tend to describe a house as near a good school in the same tone they use for south-facing, and the admissions office is less impressed by either.
Reigate's schools are one of its real strengths, strong from the first reading book to the last exam, and the house prices are simply the queue for them.